res over fourteen thousand law-books if he would
cover all the ground; and his business is to make it easy for the judge
to dispense justice and not dispense with law. That is to say, before a
judge can decide a case, he must be able to back up his opinion by
precedent. Judges are not elected to deal out justice between man and
man; they are elected to decide on points of law. Law is often a great
disadvantage to a judge--it may hamper justice--and in America there
must surely soon come a day when we will make a bonfire of every
law-book in the land, and electing our judges for life, we will make the
judiciary free. We will then require our lawyers and judges to read, and
pass examinations on Browning's "Ring and the Book," and none other. And
if we would follow the Aurelian suggestion of remitting all direct taxes
to every citizen who had not been plaintiff in a lawsuit for ten years,
we would gradually get something approaching pure justice. The people
must be educated to decide quietly and calmly their own disputes, and
this can be done only by placing an obvious penalty on litigation.
Progress in the future will consist in having less law, and fulfilment
will be reached when we have no law at all--each man governing himself,
and being willing that his neighbor shall do the same. Trouble arises
largely from each man regarding himself as his brother's keeper, and
ceasing to be his friend. Marcus Aurelius, the wise judge, saw that most
litigation is foolish and absurd--both parties are at fault, and both
right. And to bring about the good time when men shall live in peace, he
began earnestly to govern himself. His ideal was a state where men would
need no governing. Hence his "Meditations," a book which Dean Farrar
says is not inferior to the New Testament in its lofty aim and purity of
conception.

Every great book is an evolution: Marcus had been getting ready to write
this immortal volume for nearly half a century. And now in his
fifty-seventh year he found himself in the desert of Asia at the head of
the army, endeavoring to put down an insurrection of various barbaric
tribes. Later, the seat of war was shifted to the north. The enemy
struck and retreated, and danced around him as the Boers fought the
English in South Africa.

But Marcus Aurelius had time to think, and so with no books near and all
memoranda far away, he began to write out his best thoughts. At first he
expressed just for his own satisfaction, but